Cold war intelligence defectors

Defecting is the physical act of seeking political asylum in an adversary’s country and motivated by self-preservation, ideology, resentment, personal or professional crisis or some other psychological factor
Shevchenko, a dip at the UN is counted as a defector because he had acted for the CIA for several months before his defection, but also because his knowledge included information concerning the KGBs rezidentura in NY and its operations.
George Blake and Edward Lee Howard were not intelligence operators at the time of their defections, but they deserve that title because when they settled in Moscow they feared imminent arrest
Imminent consequences for espionage = Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Glen Southern, Ed Howard
Defectors have been exceptionally important sources of information and also good indicators of the integrity of a particular counter intelligence agency
Defectors have changed the course of history, and how history has been interpreted. Gouzenkos in Sept 1945 a useful starting point, predating Louis Budenz, Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, all of whom supplied information about Soviet Espionage in the US, Bentley responsible for FBI initiating over 100 investigations
Burgess and Maclean in 1951 changed British culture – Walter Kritivsky had first provided information about who ended up being Maclean, Philby, Cairncross.
Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov in Canberra in 1954 was the first example of a rezident switching sides. Piotr Deriabin and Nikolai Khokhlov – also in OZ?
“Very few, if any, made spontaneous decisions, and most took a long period agonizing over their choice and acquiring information that would guarantee them a good reception.
This material falls into six distinct categories: Knowledge of future plans; current operations; past events’ orders-of-battle data’ canteen or corridor gossip; and the recommendations of other candidates for recruitment.
Fear of false defectors handicapped if not paralyzed American counter intelligence efforts between 1964 and 1975, also redefection a hazard, a rejection of the asylum host, and a hazard in a free society but really offers a propaganda coup like Bitov and Yurchenko.
“So what possesses an intelligence officer, presumably a member of his society’s well educated and urbane elite, to abandon the system he has grown up in and benefited from, for an alien culture? Can defectors be relied upon to tell the truth? ..Under close examination, few defectors really seem to have changed their political creed but more likely experienced professional, personal or family crises that have acted as a catalyst.
Between 1946 and 1971 the British received NO Soviet defectors, the author intimates because of knowledge that SIS penetrated.